Restoring Forests: The Green Manifesto

Civilisations have always come up around water bodies, and even the greatest rulers, who made the mistake of building castles in arid areas, have had to bite the dust. For all their brilliant thinking, both the maverick king Muhammad bin Tughlaq and Mughal Emperor Jalaluddin Muhammad Akbar had to abandon their beautiful palaces and return to Delhi from Daulatabad and Fatehpur Sikhri, respectively, because both the cities lacked water.

Spread over 104 sqkm, the Sanjay Gandhi National Park in Mumbai is one of the largest urban forests in the world

Clearly, people in ancient India learnt from their mistakes and made a course correction midway. When the Mughals came to India, they chose Delhi as the seat of their power because it had the Yamuna river on one side and forests on the other two.

The Yamuna may be a shadow of what it used to be in medieval times, but the Ridge continues to be Delhi's solace. A city on the banks of a river makes sense, but not many of us have ever stopped to ask why most Indian metropolises have forest areas within city limits. Like Delhi, cities such as Bangalore, Mumbai or Chennai also have rich forest cover.

Greenbytes:

35 cities in India have a population of more than a million while China has 100.

The forest cover in Madhya Pradesh is the largest at 308,245 sq km.

The forest cover in 124 hill districts of the country is 39.82 per cent of the total geographical area of these districts.

Mangrove cover in India accounts for about 3 per cent of the world's mangrove vegetation.

Imagine this: India's largest urban forest areas are being nurtured in Mumbai and Bangalore. One of the largest urban forest areas can be found in Bangalore, spread across 400 acres of land, belonging to the Army Supply Corps. The Banerghata Park, spread over 25,000 acres, in Bangalore, and the Sanjay Gandhi National Park, spread over 104 sq km in Mumbai, are among the largest urban forests in the world today.

These are not mere coincidences. There are deep linkages between forests and urban habitat, even though most land sharks would like to believe otherwise. Apart from the obvious green cover that these areas provide, these areas also are sources of water. According to a study done by Nigel Dudley and Sue Stolton, partners at Equilibrium Consultants, Bristol, England, protected areas like forests play a big role in supplying drinking water to the world's biggest cities.

According to their study, one-third (33 out of 105) of the world's largest cities receive a significant proportion of their drinking water directly from nearby forest areas. At least five other cities obtain water from sources that originate in distant watersheds that also include protected areas; eight more obtain water from forests that are managed in a way that gives priority to providing water. This study quotes the Sanjay Gandhi National Park on the outskirts of Mumbai as a case in point as two of the city's main sources of drinking water, the Vihar and Tulsi lakes, are situated within the park.

Forest cover is not just about beauty and wildlife. The economic growth of any society is directly proportional to its ecological resources. Governments are just about beginning to put an economic value to these resources.

Many cities are suffering problems in water supply because of problems in watersheds, or depleting ground water due to deforestation and rapid urbanisation. No wonder, forest areas are suddenly being looked at in a new light because of their direct correlation to water supply.

India in particular should be concerned about its depleting forest reserve as it does not have too much to begin with. India accounts for around 16 per cent of the world's population and 15 per cent of the world's livestock, but it has only 2.4 per cent of the world's land area and 1.7 per cent of the world's forest stock.

Environmental experts recommend that at least a third of India's geographical area should be tree clad for sustainable environment and economic development. The total forest cover of our country according to 2005 assessment is 6,77,088 km, constituting 20.6 per cent of the geographic area. Of this, the tree cover has been estimated as 91,663 sq km, which is about 2.79 per cent of the country's geographical area, according to the Forest Survey of India, 2005.

Says Bittu Sahgal, wildlife export and environmentalist: "If India wants to avoid catastrophes like the July 26 flooding in Mumbai, then we need to do more to protect our forests and ecological resources."

Rampant felling of trees, on account of urbanisation and developmental activities such as construction of roads and railway lines, is seen all over India. For the very reasons, the Guindy Park in Chennai too has been shrinking. In 1958, the area of 400 hectares was handed to the Tamil Nadu Forest Department, but today only 270.57 hectares of the park remain protected.

Depleting forest reserves is a common theme across India. For instance, after an initial increase of around forest cover of 2 per cent from 1992 to 2000, the forest cover has declined in Bangalore by almost 9 per cent between 2000 and 2007. The decrease of forest-cover in the northern parts of the park has been attributed to its proximity to Bangalore city.

This will only worsen in times to come as more and more people will start living in cities. India's population has grown 2.3 times between 1951 and 1991. India's total population, which touched one billion in 2000, is expected to be 1.7 billion by 2050. The total number of cities with a population of more than a million has grown to 12 from just five in 1981.

The implication of this will not be merely ecological. In his research paper, Pavan Sukhdev, Study Leader at United Nations Environment Programme (The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity) says: "For the first time in human history, over half of the world's population lives in cities. China already has 100 cities with a population of over one million; India has 35. By 2050, the United Nations predicts that up to 80 per cent of the global population could be urban. The environmental challenges of this trend are significant."

Already, 60 per cent of China's 669 cities suffer water shortages, and in 2005, nearly half lacked wastewater treatment facilities. If living standards in cities fail to improve, the social and political implications are also clear. At present, 30 per cent of the population of the world's city-regions lives in extreme poverty. By 2030, this proportion will increase to about 40 per cent. According to Sukhdev, Singapore is a model that most urban centres should emulate.

The 'garden city' offers model National Parks service and it continues to 'green' the city with initiatives like rooftop gardens and reserved wilderness areas for the public like Sungei Buloh, a mangrove park restored from disused shrimp farms; Bukit Timah Nature Reserve, a hilly area of primary and secondary tropical rainforest; and McRitchie Reservoir, another natural area which serves as the catchment for the island city's main freshwater reservoir. Singapore has also taken the lead in setting up a "City Biodiversity Index"? which is a grading system to measure how cities worldwide are conserving their plant and animal species.

In India, urban forestry practices are outdated. If urban areas have to have more plantations, then a significant shift in planning and management of cities is required. It's imperative that cities relook at regulations that limit replacement of old diseased and crooked trees.

Urban greenery should increasingly be treated as assets, which absorb carbon dioxide and generate oxygen. No other living being generates oxygen except trees.

The present method of fixing targets based on number of saplings planted needs to be changed. Trees that are good in carbon sequestration can go a long way in mitigating effects of climate change.

At present, efforts are underway to measure the economic value of natural assets-national parks and forests. It's imperative to educate people about the utility of green belts, since public knowledge of the connection between human well being and ecosystem services is limited. Many policy-makers have a poor understanding of what natural capital is, or how much it is worth to sustain the health and well-being of communities. It's time that cities expended some energy on understanding this.

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